"They are 'Precious Snowflakes', wrapped in cotton wool from day one," said Paul French, the founder of Access Asia, a China-based research company.

"Nothing is ever quite right for them. It is always either too hot or too cold and they are all hypochondriacs.

~snip~

"The first generation, the Little Emperors, were quite tough: fat little thugs always stuffing themselves full of McDonald's," said Mr French. "The new generation is very concerned with things like air quality, which the Little Emperors never bothered about.

"They only drink Evian and are scared of food unless it is imported. Their parents tread quietly around them so they can do 'natural waking', where they do not use alarm clocks but are in tune with their biorhythms."

~snip~

Gu Jianmei, 47, has taught at the Tianjia'an No. 3 kindergarten in Huainan, Anhui province, for three decades. She said the current generation of students had been banned from making any "big movements", like jumping, dancing or crawling, because of fears the children might hurt themselves.

"We have padded all the stairs, bannisters, corners and the children do not do physical exercise. Instead we lie them on cushioned mats," she said.

"They are more aggressive, and also more weak. They cannot control themselves and they give up when given tasks to do. Because their parents do everything for them, they do not believe they can do things themselves. They cannot even do up their buttons," she said.

~snip~

"The first generation of single children have already been deprived of having brothers and sisters. The second generation is even worse: they do not have cousins, uncles or aunts either. Some of them face being entirely alone when they grow up and their parents pass away. Think how lonely they will be."

First there were the Little Emperors, the often chubby and spoiled first generation of children born under China's one-child policy. Now the Precious Snowflakes have emerged - a generation so coddled some cannot even tie their own shoelaces.

The members of America's new upper class tend not to watch the same movies and television shows that the rest of America watches, don't go to kinds of restaurants the rest of America frequents, tend to buy different kinds of automobiles, and have passions for being green, maintaining the proper degree of body fat, and supporting gay marriage that most Americans don't share. Their child-raising practices are distinctive, and they typically take care to enroll their children in schools dominated by the offspring of the upper middle classor, better yet, of the new upper class. They take their vacations in different kinds of places than other Americans go and are often indifferent to the professional sports that are so popular among other Americans. Few have served in the military, and few of their children either.

Worst of all, a growing proportion of the people who run the institutions of our country have never known any other culture. They are the children of upper-middle-class parents, have always lived in upper-middle-class neighborhoods and gone to upper-middle-class schools. Many have never worked at a job that caused a body part to hurt at the end of the day, never had a conversation with an evangelical Christian, never seen a factory floor, never had a friend who didn't have a college degree, never hunted or fished. They are likely to know that Garrison Keillor's monologue on Prairie Home Companion is the source of the phrase "all of the children are above average," but they have never walked on a prairie and never known someone well whose IQ actually was below average.

The second generation is even worse: they do not have cousins, uncles or aunts either
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

HOLY CRAP!

This never even occurred to me. I have never even thought about what it would be like to be the only child of an only child of an only child. You literally have ZERO living relatives other than your parents...and if your spouse is also the only child of an only child of an only child...MIND BOGGLING!

Imagine a whole nation...billions of people...all are in this same boat. FREAKY!

Well, we can feel good that our X-gen and Millenials are not quite as wimpy as China’s. But it is close:

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

In the year 4545
Ain’t gonna need your teeth, won’t need your eyes
You won’t find a thing to chew
Nobody’s gonna look at you

In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you

In the year 6565
Ain’t gonna need no husband, won’t need no wife
You’ll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube’ Whoooa

In the year 7510
If God’s a-comin’ he ought to make it by then
Maybe he’ll look around himself and say
Guess it’s time for the Judgement day

In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head then
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again

In the year 9595
I’m kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He’s taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain’t put back nothing

Now it’s been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man’s reign is through
But through eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it’s only yesterday

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may thrive
In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today ....(fading...)

9
posted on 01/08/2012 1:05:06 PM PST
by freedumb2003
(Spoiler Alert! The secret to Terra Nova: THEY ARE ALL DEAD!!!)

This is why socialism runs counter to human nature. Relationships make life meaningful, and the totalitarians always seek to dissolve relationships other than with the state. The one child policy has served this end.

This devolution of Chinese society will not end well unlesss they make radical changes. They will achieve the socialist ideal of the anthill, but their worker ants won't be working. What then?

Really, no aunts or uncles, basically no family. So the state can be your family I guess. But, I wonder if that’s not in store here too, at least for many families. I know many people with one child or no children. Another interesting (but sad in my opinion) phenomena is that because so many American couples are waiting so late to have children their kids don’t have Grandparents as they get older. It’s really changed the dynamics of being a family (and not for the better in my opinion).

21
posted on 01/08/2012 1:21:57 PM PST
by brytlea
(An ounce of chocolate is worth a pound of cure)

Yes they do. You know, its actually even worse than indicated because the one child policy causes a skewed sex ratio. There is a surplus of males...males with no relatives and with a stunted ability to socialize...and nothing in their lives to compete with the state’s agenda set for them.

The ruling elite of china have created for themselves a vast nation of worker drones. But at the expense of a future, if the one child policy persists. I don’t think the fact that many of them are pampered spoiled brats with no skills will hurt their economy though. At 3 billion people, even if 2/3rds of every generation is disfunctional, they still have more than enough worker drones to keep the system flourishing. For now.

This never even occurred to me. I have never even thought about what it would be like to be the only child of an only child of an only child. You literally have ZERO living relatives other than your parents...and if your spouse is also the only child of an only child of an only child...MIND BOGGLING!

I have friends like that. Actually, I haven't heard from them in a couple of years, so I don't know if they are still alive. Not only are they both "only" children, they elected to have no children of their own. He was a highly successful attorney and they both inherited a good bit of wealth from their parents,so they are "set" financially. All they did was fight over it.

Now, they spend all their time with the Sierra Club, climbing mountains, travel, skiing, worrying about their genealogy (strange for people with no heirs), and (him) playing with model trains with the local train society. I would not consider it a happy union (alcohol for him; nit picking for her).

As a baby-boomer, I had a revelation when one of my students told me "You don't get it. Children today have more parents than parents have children."

I realized that he was correct. In my circle of friends there are more adults than children and the kids have the two biological parents plus step-parents, half-step-parents not to mention God-parents and assorted childless adult relatives.

I was kind of glad to see this...and, (sort of) sorry to say, more glad to see that this segment of society may, in their boredom and life of leisure, turn to drugs. Normally I don't wish drug use on a people, but if what is bad for China is good for us--especially if they are trying to kill us.

But what I realized soon after, was that we have the equivalent--and it is a much larger percentage of our population. Not to even mention the kids of various ethnic backgrounds that seem to identify more with their "home country"-whether they were born here or not. Even if there are 10 million "snowflake kids" in China, that is a drop of in an ocean. They have plenty of hungry kids who will be more than adequate to serve as cannon feeder, cannon fodder against us...or guard in an extermination camp for the lazy, no good "snowflake kids"

“The second generation is even worse: they do not have cousins, uncles or aunts either”

My mother is an only child and my uncle on the other side died when I was very young. I have two sisters and no brothers. I had trouble socializing in school and I think this may have had something to do with it. When other kids would talk about having a full house at Christmas I had no reference. I can see how a whole country like this could have some serious social problems.

"They are more aggressive, and also more weak. They cannot control themselves and they give up when given tasks to do. Because their parents do everything for them, they do not believe they can do things themselves. They cannot even do up their buttons," she said.

This never even occurred to me. I have never even thought about what it would be like to be the only child of an only child of an only child. You literally have ZERO living relatives other than your parents.

You're right. That is weird to contemplate. No uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters. I guess one would have or might have grandparents, but that's it.

Yeah, I had some problems socializing as a youngster(but for different reasons) so I can relate. I took everything literally, and expected others to do the same. I think I was nearly twenty before I started to feel halfway comfortable with popular phrases and the fact that people don’t mean things literally. I still remember being disgusted with people for parroting the stupid things we say to each other as greetings...hi, how is your day...are you having a good day...how are you doing today...and other nonsense. My feeling was if you couldn’t think of anything more meaningful to say I would prefer you keep your thoughts to yourself. And I had a habit of telling people literally what I thought, although not with insulting words. So you can imagine what the average small talk was like for me...pure torture is what. They would almost always end up calling me names which would result in me literally punching them in the face. Yep, age 5 through 15 was not exactly a fairy tale for me. I think part of it was genetic. I still remember my mother and grandmother both saying sternly “state your business” when a stranger would approach them with meaningless chit chat.

“They are more aggressive, and also more weak. They cannot control themselves and they give up when given tasks to do. Because their parents do everything for them, they do not believe they can do things themselves. They cannot even do up their buttons,” she said.

I guess this is the answer to the China problem people worry about.

I was contemplating that line as I scrolled down the comments. It occurs to me that this will also bleed over into their education system as well. How far down will it be ‘dumbed down’? At the very least critical thinking and reasoning skills will also atrophy.

44
posted on 01/08/2012 4:03:54 PM PST
by The Working Man
(The mantra for BO's reign...."No Child Left a Dime")

China also has no problem killing trouble-makers. These spoiled only children come from upper class families or educated middle classes - farmers get 2 kids and the desperate poor often have illegal children and pay the fines. Only those who have been in the cities for two generations or were functionaries have this 4-2-1 family model.

The current birth rate is 1.8 in China, since one child is the goal but rural families, ethnic minorities and certain desirables and rich who pay the fines get to have 2 kids.
China’s birth rate was close to 6 kids from 1950s-1960s. In the 1970s, they started trying to get the birth rate down. Even in 1975, the birth rate was 2.7.
This means that the first generation of only children were born to parents with 2-5 siblings.

Demographers expect India’s population to surpass the population of China, currently the most populous country in the world, by 2030. At that time, India is expected to have a population of more than 1.53 billion while China’s population is forecast to be at its peak of 1.46 billion (and will begin to drop in subsequent years).

India is currently home to about 1.21 billion people, representing a full 17% of the earths population. India’s 2011 census showed that the country’s population had grown by 181 million people in the prior decade.

When India gained independence from the United Kingdom sixty years ago, the country’s population was a mere 350 million. Since 1947, the population of India has more than tripled.

Disclaimer:
Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual
posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its
management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the
exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.